[deluxeMT]

24/06/08

Training day:

Warm-up (more stair and dumbbell based stuff)

9 stations, 5 minute rounds, couple of 1 minute rest periods in there, but mostly 10 seconds and go

Heavy bag
Pad man
Sparring with one of our gyms fighters
Heavy bag
Shadow boxing
Heavy bag
Shadow boxing
Heavy bag
Shadow boxing

3 x 1:30 rounds - 45 target burpees, actual = 45, 44, 38 (faaaaiilluuureeee)

Warm down

The good:

- Our current gym has about 4 heavy bags, and as a result my total heavy bag time in the last year is probably less than 3 hours total, this was a good chance to really work the bags (new gym has 20+, sweet)
- Jab was feeling solid
- Long step-up knee = win

The bad:

- Having a few issues gauging the range on my right hand, I'm always fine with my jab, but the right hand I find particularly elusive, requires work.
- 4+ punch combos once I start getting tired, by punch 3, they don't have much power
- Still find myself getting cramped up too much, need to stay at my long range

[deluxeMT]

25/06/08

Conditioning? Haha

After not having played squash for 6 years or so, I started playing again a few weeks ago. I've had a few games with my dad since then (who isn't a bad squash player himself). I decided to enter a local squash tournament at the club in my home town and chance my arm to see how I'd go. Coming into the tournament as an ungraded player having played 3 games in the last 6 years I wasn't sure how I'd do, but I had my first game tonight.

Played a D2 graded player, lost 10-8, 9-7, 9-5. So nailed 3-0, but they were good games.

One thing I'll say is, once you've done MT and are training actively and hard, something like squash just isn't so bad from a fitness point of view. I feel like I could have played a long hard 5 game nightmare, and still had enough energy to go hit some pads afterwards.

Good times.

Training day tomorrow.

Random diet update. Been working on my diet especially in the last week, think I've lost up to 1kg, so the priority is to keep that off and lose a further kg. I want to be comfortably walking around at 75kg or less, with a view to fighting middleweight (up to 71.5kg) later in the year.

[deluxeMT]

26/06/08

Training day:

Warm-up

Conditioning:

Sitting with back to a wall in a parallel squat position, 4kg dumbbell in each hand, arms out stretched. Held that for something like 5 minutes (with plenty of failure)

3 x 1:30 rounds - target 45 burpees - 45, 40, 38 - quads were FRIED from the sit-squats

Station drills - 10 x 5 minute rounds

Sparring
Sparring
Pad man
Heavy bag - Cross work
Sparring
Heavy bag - Straight knee
Sparring
Heavy bag - Left hook
Sparring
Heavy bag - Jab work

Conditioning:

Erik push-ups (love you Erik > )

Warm down

The good:

Pads:

- Kept my range well
- Managed to stay relaxed and received the benefits as far as last longer stamina-wise

Sparring:

- Pumped the jab out, high volume, hard, with good stamina
- Towards the end began to find my range
- Rib kicks were working well
- Worked more angles to my advantgage

Heavy bag:

- First time I've really had a chance to drill my straight knee on the heavy bag, feeling a large amount more confident with it now

The bad:

Pads:

- Need more stamina, still not where I want to be, relax relax!
- More penetration needed on straight knees
- Check more kicks

Sparring:

- When I get rushed I need to break their combo more quickly, sparring out of a ring I can get away with backing up, but with ropes behind me this will be all bad.
- Work on getting my jab in their face more before following up with my kick
- Throw more combos, threw too many single shots, wasn't coming in hard enough when my jab landed

Heavy bag:

- Cross still feels gutless
- More footwork needed when working the heavy-bag

General:

Ok so deluxeMT used to be with a girl who trains at the same gym as me, but for a while we haven't been on speaking terms - messy messy.

Turns out she was going to be one of the people I was going to have to spar for 5 minutes. We looked at each other like 'oh this isn't going to be pretty'. We proceeded to beat the fuck out of each other for the next 5 minutes. To be honest I probably beat her slightly more than she beat me, apparently I was going a little hard (oops!).

The round ended, and we just looked at each other, then hugged it out, we're now on speaking terms again. Just awesome.

VIOLENCE SOLVES EVERYTHING!

Even when it's what would otherwise be male assaults female!

[deluxeMT]

27/06/08

Conditioning:

Had dinner at my folks place and they fed me curry and rice. Hardly fight diet! So I felt guilty:

4km run at 11pm

[deluxeMT]

1/7/08

Training day:

Warm-up

100 press-ups
100 sit-ups
100 squats

We then spent the entire training working on checking kicks and various drills around that.

Warm down

Uneventful training, was expecting to get hammered again with a hard training, but that didn't happen.

[deluxeMT]

Update, sorry guys I've been totally shit at updating this recently.

My first fight is coming up in 2 weeks. Novice rules - 16oz gloves, shin guards, no elbows/knees to the head, no winner/loser.

Been matched against someone who's 81kg, and has had 1 novice fight so far.

Mildly concerned because I'm about 76kg peak weight at the moment and I don't really want to try and pack on weight in the next 2 weeks, so I'll probably just be fighting at 76kg. But this is it, the real deal, we'll see how it goes. It's on.